Grettir skipped drunkenly; dozens of arrows bristled the ground a few steps in front of him. Doffing his hat with exaggerated gestures of deference, Grettir veered towards the arrows with freakish bounding steps, stopped suddenly as he encountered the feathered shafts, teetered forward while waving his arms as if he were about to pitch into an abyss, then staggered backwards before tripping over his flapping legs, tumbling into a heap, and starting all over again. The Seljuks, at first incredulous at the assault of this single addle-brained infidel, had begun to join in the game, sending down their arrows every time Grettir lurched close. Grettir saluted the salvos with increasingly elaborate flourishes of his silly hat. The jeering Seljuks soon crowded the walls.
Suddenly Grettir dropped his hat and jerked his head up as if a rope were pulling against his neck. Swivelling his head on his distended neck, he reached down and clutched at his crotch, then began increasingly vigorous scratching motions. The Seljuks howled with laughter. Grettir turned his back to the walls, pulled from beneath his tunic the specially shaped pig bladder he had contrived and pumped his hips and jerked his free hand up and down as he blew into the bladder. When he had the device inflated and in place, he turned with his arms wide. The Seljuks shrieked with delight and began an immediate chorus of trilling observations. Grettir surged wildly with his hips, showing off a pig-bladder phallus as long as a man’s arm, complete with a melon-size scrotum.
Grettir continued to stalk with his absurd giant steps, his hips pumping in enormous circular motions. Within minutes the Seljuks had several of their concubines up on the walls, stripped naked and gyrating their pelvises in reply to Grettir’s prodigious thrusts. The walls swarmed with Seljuks now; they jammed the crenellated openings and balanced on top of the merlons. One warrior fell from his perch and lay in a cream-coloured heap at the base of the wall; no one even noticed. ‘Loki,’ Grettir said aloud, as happy as he had ever been, ‘I have shamed you.’
At the base of the cliff Haraldr could clearly hear the rising din of mirth. He started up the rope ladder first, followed by Halldor, Ulfr, the fire blower, and then a gradual procession that ultimately would total a hundred picked men. Haraldr climbed quickly, repeating the phrases the Mandator had taught him and reflecting on the strange hilarity that accompanied their grim ascent. He soon reached the jagged rock lip at the summit; he gripped the stone and easily pulled himself over the natural obstacle.
The lance blurred by him and he heard Halldor grunt. Haraldr swung his shield to his front and looked back. Halldor hung by one hand, his face gushing blood. Haraldr’s shield took a blow and he had to turn. His sword lifted the Seljuk into the air and sent him flailing into the gorge. Haraldr crouched atop the rock lip. He could see right through the crenellation into the walled town. As if the kastron were a box tipped to one side, every man in the city seemed to have spilled onto the west wall or stood below it, waiting for an opportunity to view Grettir’s performance; apparently only a single guard had remained posted along the entire east wall. Haraldr surveyed the route he intended to take as the others began to gather beside him. Halldor’s face was severely gashed. ‘Can you go on?’ asked Haraldr.
‘They didn’t cut my legs off,’ snapped Halldor.
Haraldr dropped to the grey-brick pathway atop the wall. They already had twenty-five men on top now; enough. The rest should be able to join them quickly. Flanked by Halldor and Ulfr, Haraldr took his axe with one hand, set his shield, and positioned the Roman with the fire blower almost against his back.
The first Seljuks to notice the Varangian invaders were lost in the clamour near the centre of the west wall. Haraldr could see them distinctly pounding and tugging at their fellows like miniature actors in a raucous comedy. Then a few more Seljuks began to turn, but most were held rapt by Grettir and the naked mime of their whores. When the Varangian phalanx reached the southwest corner of the kastron, they met the unwary Seljuk spectators like a whirring, relentless steel engine.
The carnage was appalling; hastily produced scimitars did almost nothing to deter the Varangian advance. The first Seljuks to fall screamed their oaths to Allah or simply ululated with surprise, but their distress was blanketed by the blaring revelry of their fellows. Only after dozens had pitched off the battlements did the change in tenor begin to spread orchestrally north, to the centre of the wall, but the crowding made a concerted defence impossible. Only the sheer weight of frantic bodies began to stop the Varangian push. Haraldr shouted to the infantryman armed with the fire blower.
The long brass tube, a glowing taper now fastened to the tip, jutted past Haraldr’s shield, a phallus far more obscene than the pig bladder Grettir still played with below. Haraldr grimaced against the intense heat as the fire streamed out. The molten lance virtually seemed to blow a hole in the first Seljuk, then splattered; Haraldr quickly stomped his boots to shake off the singeing droplets. The spout of flame swept in a slow arc across the breadth of the battlements, quickly extending its reach as flaming Seljuks plunged from the wall. Within seconds the Seljuks began to leap well in advance of the fiery tongue. When the liquid was exhausted, Haraldr looked ahead, just past the blackened bricks that defined the fire blower’s deadly range. Waiting for him was an armoured guard cordoning the white-silk-clad figure of Kilij. With Ulfr and Halldor at his side, and now almost a hundred Varangians on the walls behind him, Haraldr pushed forward across the scorched bricks. The Seljuk guard died quickly, their elegant scimitars and oaths to Allah no match for Hunland steel and Odin’s fury.
‘Kilij,’ said Haraldr. He handed his shield to Ulfr and gripped his axe with both hands. He had already calculated that the next arc of his blade would be perhaps more fateful than the blow that had killed Hakon, and yet he did not need Odin to strengthen his arm, only to assuage his fears. Before he had climbed to these walls, he had been certain that when Kilij’s head rolled into the streets, his Seljuk followers would immediately give up their cause and their captives. But now that wager seemed far less certain.
The Seljuk leader was viciously handsome, his dark, sharp features framed with a dense beard and a beautiful engraved silver helm. Holding Haraldr’s blade with his eyes, Kilij slowly knelt, removed his helm, and began a recitation punctuated with many Allahs. Haraldr ignored the appeal and stepped forward, conscious that if he had erred in his judgement, he would never escape these walls alive. He caught the Seljuk’s night-filled eyes and in Odin’s ancient voice he recited the phrase that the Mandator had taught him. The words were said to mean, ‘I am the Avenging Angel.’
Kilij lowered his forehead to bricks speckled with the blood of his guards. Atop the walls, the silence was now complete. From the city below came the wails of badly burned men. Haraldr told Halldor to hold Kilij’s head up. Halldor yanked on the glossy black hair, bringing the dark face to that of the golden angel. Kilij’s pupils became antic flying insects seeking escape from a doomed head. Haraldr lifted his axe high, his own fate as tentative as his victim’s.